For years the China Project at the Center for Process Studies in Claremont was known in Chinese as an institute. So the steady stream of Chinese scholars who came to study there arrived with certain expectations.

{snip}

“The institute is so well known in our field I had imagined that it would at least be in a big fancy building,” said Xiuhua Zhang, a professor of Marxist theory and Western philosophy at Beijing’s prestigious China University of Political Science and Law, who spent this year at the center. “I never expected it to be such a tiny place. So many people crowded together in one small office without even dividers. The bookshelves and the desks blend together. And it’s in a basement!”

Noting such reactions, those organizing the scholars’ visits have tried to downgrade assumptions. What once they called in Chinese an “institute,” they now refer to more humbly as a “center.”

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Take Zhang’s other surprise upon arrival at the center, which is located on the campus of Claremont School of Theology. She had been told she would be living with an American host family. She thought blond. She thought rich. She expected lots of children and a pool and many gadgets.

Then she met her host, Madhuri Bhattacharya, 69, an Indian immigrant and a widow living alone in a simple house.

There was no pool, and few modern amenities–fewer, in fact, than she was used to back home. “I even have an HD flat-screen TV at home in Beijing,” Zhang said, surprised that her American host did not.

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“You know, Chinese people can’t believe such big ideas can come from this small place,” Wang [Zhihe Wang, the founder of the China Project] said. {snip}

The “monk” of greatest stature at the Process Center is its founding co-director, John Cobb, 85–Chinese scholars usually can’t wait to meet him. But, in person, he hardly fits their image of a distinguished thinker. They are shocked to find that he lives not in a big home with servants but in a small one-bedroom apartment in a Christian retirement community, where he takes care of his elderly wife.

Chinese visitors watch in disbelief as he bends down to tie his wife’s shoelaces. They are stunned when they visit him at home and he leaves the lights off in the living room to conserve energy.

“My first impression was he is living the life of a real communist,” said Yiyu Liu, 27, a graduate student from Beijing Normal University. “My generation grew up in a material world. All we care about is name brands. To see a Westerner with his stature live like that and care about what I have to say, it was a shock.”

Most of the Chinese scholars who visit these days say they are used to more material luxury back home.

{snip}

Food is the source of some of the major moments of cultural confusion, admits Wang.

“In the U.S. even the best dinners consist of an appetizer, a main course and dessert, but in China that would not be enough,” he said. “During a banquet the food has to flow and there has to be at least a dozen dishes or so.”

There must also be meat.

Once, a Chinese scholar was invited to the home of another process theory professor, who happened to be a vegetarian. The scholar was served what he described as “barbecue roots”–roasted vegetables, including carrots and potatoes.

“Our Chinese scholar took a couple of symbolic bites, put the food down and didn’t touch it again,” said Wang. “It was so embarrassing. The professor is such a prominent figure. He served what he thought was quality food.”

{snip}

{snip} Once they [Wang and his wife Fan] invited Chinese students home for pasta, to show them the sort of food Americans eat.

“They didn’t tell me in person, but when they went back to China they told people they had no idea we lived such impoverished lives in America,” said Fan. {snip}

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